Sunday, January 24, 2016

In the play, "Tape" by Jose Rivera, what part of the play marks the beginning of the work's climax?

In Jose Rivera's two-man play, "Tape," the beginning of
the work's climax is found when the Person and the Attendant begin to speak about the
tape recorder.


The premise of this short play is that a
man, the "Person," has died, though this is not immediately
evident. The "Attendant" is someone who is there to act
as...



…a
little bit of everything. Confidant, confessor, friend, stern taskmaster.
Guide.



It is not clear if the
place where the Person and the Attendant have met in hell or purgatory; it
might be hell, as some sources cite biblical text as referring to
more or less "tolerable" damnation. So when the Attendant tells the
Person...



We
don't want to cause you undue
suffering.



…this indicates
that there might be suffering, and while not "undue" or
unwarranted, it is left to the audience to decide where the Person and the Attendant
actually are—what is obvious is that some kind of suffering
will take place.


As the play
continues, the Person and Attendant speak: the Attendant is ready to answer questions,
though at first the Person says he has none. He is frustrated at being dead: he makes
mention of this:


readability="5">

There's not much I really have to know is there?
Really?



And later, when the
Person gets really angry:


readability="5">

Does it matter? Does it really f***ing
matter?



Eventually the
conversation leads to the tape recorder. When the Attendant asks the Person if he knows
how to use one, the Person admits that:


readability="5">

...these things were pretty obsolete by the time
I was old enough to afford stereo
equipment...



So the Attendant
goes about explaining the basics of the reel-to-reel tape recorder. (It would be
important to note that these kind of tapes operated very similarly to cassette tapes,
but were much larger, perhaps eight to ten inches (or more) across
each reel, meaning they ran much
longer
than a cassette tape that might only last two hours.)
The Attendant explains that the Person might want to use the
"rewind" button in order to listen to something that might not have recorded so clearly.
When the Person asks about a "fast forward" button, this is when the climax of the play
begins. (There is also foreshadowing) as well. When we want to skip over a song or
programming on a VCR tape or DVD, we use the fast forward feature to speed things along.
However, the Person soon learns that he will be listening to ten-thousand
boxes
of reel-to-reel tapes, containing all the lies he
has ever told, and it sounds like that will take a very long time.
When the Attendant reveals the ugliness of the task that lies before the Person, the
climax of the play takes place: the tapes are a form of punishment; the idea that one
cannot fast forward through any of these tapes indicates that there are no shortcuts.
The sense of fast-forwarding is not in itself important, but in the context of listening
to ten-thousand boxes of tapes, this detail becomes overwhelming, and so this is where
the climax begins.



Additional
Source
:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Rivera_(playwright)

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